Bilingual Being (14 page)

The nuns tore off their veils in the wake of Vatican
II
*
– «Pourquoi? Y'a rien à voir» [Why bother? There's nothing worth seeing], my father quipped at the time. Common folks started going to mass in their sports clothes, then stopped going altogether. The illusion of religion as a marker faded within half a generation, revealing beneath it the thick cloth of a linguistic identity that was seen and lived as difference. So it was that in the last days of cloak-and-dagger talk of religionas-language, I was taught some elementary distinctions between «les genres de monde» [the kinds of people in the world]. It was my own indoctrination into what most certainly qualifies as an ethnocentric mindset. And yet the features attributed to each culture, according to the French Canadian worldview in which I was a raised, the snippets of knowledge from which I wove my earliest beliefs about myself and “others,” seemed remarkably innocuous.

I wish I could say that I learned each story on a particular day, as part of some emotionally poignant moment. Or that I have one of those mythically perfect recalls of sitting on an elder's knee while I heard the intricate points of classic family lore that I'd later tell my own children. But what I most remember learning from an elder's knee isn't the sort of thing anyone would enjoy telling children. And there wasn't a day, or even an instant, when glorious tales of valour spun their generous mysteries by an enormous pot of simmering soup. As it turned out, my relationship with romance in my mother tongue culture was something entirely other than an embrace of legends.

So what I have in my head in place of such theoretical, confabulated wonders is an organized sets of boxes stripped of potency and sensory overload – Rubbermaid bins full of details, sufficiently neutralized and removed from the cobwebs that link them to what still lies beneath – dark, dirty, and repressed. That's how I can stack a few memories, move
them around, and even open them from time to time, when I'm rested enough or on an upswing.

As for the actual moments of learning these things I'm about to share, they're revelations about culture and society told almost in transference, between what was actually being said and done – tales that require at least as much inferencing as they do listening. They're subtle narratives, sometimes textured stealthily, and sometimes wedged sharply, within minor comments about setting the table, taking out the trash, or changing shirts.

These foundational understandings didn't get told as stories, didn't ever pass as stories. Rather, they infused the most typical dramas of daily life. As a result, they fled through the psyche like a shooting star. Did you feel that? What? Admittedly, then, they lacked the mystique of the allegories of glory that have fortified humankind for millennia, and they never felt the troubadour's deft hands or mouth. They were, instead, everyday talk by everyday people. But these folktales gained something in their transition to ordinariness. They became incontestable truth.

C'PAS CATHOLIQUE

In those parables of civilization that defined us and the Other, the divisions went like this. Catholics (read “French Canadians”) could build fires when camping or at a cottage, and they could start up a wood stove easily. Non-Catholics (read “English Canadians”) had trouble getting a fire started, and they needed perfectly dry wood (a rarity in the woods on any given day). And their fires (even with dry wood) would be smoky. This one was so firmly ingrained that I still recognize the ability to handle a fire as the ultimate test of masculinity, so much so that I fell in love with a Turk in late adulthood in no small part because he was outstanding in the woods. Survivorman. Strip away new knowledge, and only the ancient truths remain. A real man is a fire-starter. For the same reason, French boys didn't join boy scouts but the English ones did. French boys didn't need badges to live off the land. They could do it innately. Or so the story went.

I also learned in those years that Catholics (read “French Canadians”) could handle their alcohol, while non-Catholics (read “English
Canadians”) couldn't. The training for this happened young, so that a twelve-year-old was invited to watery wine to strengthen the system. It had the importance of passing on a life skill, like a profession or the language itself. There wasn't any choice about what you tasted that first time – in fact, it didn't seem to matter. It's not like there was some great coming-of-age moment when everyone cheered you on as you sipped from a special bottle or a favourite recipe. Instead, there was a moment, unannounced, usually at a party, where a couple of folks who had too much to drink themselves said to the host, just prior to a toast, «Bin comment ça qu'y a pas d'verre lui-là?» [Hey, how come he doesn't have a drink, this one?]

The youth in question would blush (or maybe not) and take the glass and whatever was in it – champagne or red wine, normally, but it could be anything at all. The elders drank from their own glasses quickly, and one or two among the dozen or more gathered would notice the youth as he or she traversed into adulthood – «T'in, vois-tu? C'est tout,» one would say. [There. See? That's it.] The moment passed without fanfare, and the youth might well be offered a refill later. Once broken, like virginity, it seemed that quantities became irrelevant. The line had been crossed.

My father was somewhat more ceremonious, I suppose, pouring me a glass of red wine one weekday at dinner, when no company was over and I can't recall what we were eating. I was eleven when he got up, fetched another glass from the cupboard behind his head, and poured three instead of two that night. «T'in. C'est l'temps q't'apprennes.» [There. It's time you learned.] My mother said nothing and served the meal. There was neither a smile nor a reproach from wife to husband. Initiation was, as it turns out, a non-event. A rite of passage as, well, just a passage, an ordinary walk. Then again, my own virginity was already long gone, so maybe it's symbolic that there was even less of a threshold, no celebratory context. Or am I just reading too much into everything, as usual? What did either of them know about my “troubles” back then?

At any rate, Catholics (aka the French) could also fix anything, from small engines to worn clothing. Non-Catholics (aka the English) had to «appeler quelqu'un» [call someone] to handle their equipment
breakdowns. Catholic women (aka the French) got right to work doing dishes after meals, taking their wine with them; they washed their floors properly, on their hands and knees, applying wax by hand too; and they sewed, which was necessary to the production and maintenance of clothing. In harsh weather, to make thicker cloth, they became skilled with a loom. That's why my mother and her sisters attended a boarding school for domestic arts, in Ancienne Lorette (on Huron land), to learn to weave carpets, bedspreads, winter skirts, and curtains, to cook French food inexpensively, and to remove stubborn stains.

I still have one of their projects, beautiful blue floor-length curtains with huge peacocks. They've moved from closet to closet across the country as I've moved – too heavy and precious for actual use. At least I've managed to hang on to them. As for my mother, she plays cards to this day with her former classmates – gin rummy, apparently – though the games are a witness to the passage of time, like everything else, with members facing the usual challenges of old age. «Ça, ces des vraies bonnes amies» [now those are really good friends], my mother says, and I'm sure she's right.

But the truth is, I have no idea what she's talking about. Keeping friends for seventy years? Seriously? That's the comfort of roots set deep, I guess. All but one still resides in her own home too. They're widows of eighty plus, sturdy and immovable, who, like my mother, hold every still-living love of their lives in their thinning hands. Me, I only outlive men in my own home by ejecting them, and I can barely hang on to the slim contents of a linen shelf.

Maybe I'm more like the others, after all. Non-Catholic women (aka the English) shamefully let their dishes pile up while they drank tea with their guests after meals. They washed their floors with a mop, and they engaged in the pretentious arts of knitting and crocheting, making fragile garments of no long-term value, or ornaments for their furniture, doilies and runners, of which there were far too many in an English household. These were rarer in a Catholic household, and even then could be found only in the «salon» [the front sitting room], received as gifts from «les bonnes soeurs.» In the absence of husbands and children, the sisters at least could be forgiven for spending their evenings with handfuls of needles. I confess that I do usually have a craft
project going on the side – but I can't crochet or knit to save my soul. I sit with guests after a meal, but I wash my floors on my hands and knees. Do I even fit in here? Am I in or out?

So common were these comparisons between insiders and outsiders based on religion that there arose a frequent idiom for describing anything that was substandard in some way or considered blamable or undesirable. As Jews use the expression “It isn't kosher,” and Brits say “It's not cricket,” Quebecers have a parallel idiom to convey the idea of something that's unfair, or unjust, or just not good enough: «C'pas catholique» [It isn't Catholic]. And that says it all.

ONE WORD, TWO WORLDS

It's remarkable what language can pack into a short phrase – or even into one word. Take «c'est different.» On the surface, it's a self-explanatory acknowledgment. But underneath, it's a judgment. And beneath that, it becomes an imperative.

First case in point: a widowed cousin's new boyfriend. «Pis, comment tu'l trouves?» [So, what do you think of him?] It's the usual debriefing in the car as we drive home from a family gathering and run through the list of who's gained or lost weight, who's looking better or worse, who bothered to come and who didn't show up, and so on. «Y est correct,» I answer back, or maybe just «J'sais pas.» [I don't know, or, whatever.] I'm weary of engaging this particular line of questioning because I can already see that it's going where it always goes, and I'm tired of whipping round a short-curved U-turn.

«Y est différent, en tout cas,» my mother replies. [He's different, in any case.] In short, he's somehow unlike the rest of the clan, and she easily finds a co-passenger who'll concur. The issue is that he has a peculiar French dialect, not the local Quebec one. He's from Montreal – with those rolled r's, with the /oir/ at the end of words like «voir» and «pouvoir» that sounds more like /oère/ instead of our “normal” /ouar/ sound; and liaisons and ellipses where one doesn't quite expect them. On top of it all, he doesn't talk much. Irony? No matter, he's done. That one word has sealed his fate in the extended family.

He is, by all appearances, a kind and decent man simply presenting a variant attribute of speech – both more and less of it – in our heritage
language. Yet because of that uniqueness, he's deemed less than satisfactory. What's implied, then, is that my cousin would be better off without him, so she'd be wise to break it off pretty soon. The confirmation? The very next sentence: «J'sais pas si ça va durer bin longtemps, ça.» [I don't know if that relationship's going to last too long.] In fact, it's been going strong for about seven years now, and my cousin seems happier than ever.

Second case in point: pita bread. At seventeen, I brought some with me on a visit home from university, my staple food back then. I prepared to serve my mother a piece, just so she could try it, anxious for her valued opinion. Like the near-expert that she is about food and homemade bread, she observed the packaging and the shape pensively, holding back her judgment deliberately. «Bin, c'est différent,» she slowly said. I knew then and there that she'd never buy pita bread for her own consumption, and likely never eat it again. It didn't really matter what she'd end up thinking of the taste: the decision had been made. That was more than thirty years ago, and it still holds. No pita.

Third case in point: vegetarian chili. At twenty, I returned from Montreal on another weekend, and for some reason I can't remember, found myself alone with my father at meal time – unusual indeed. Of course, my mother had left something for him, fully prepared and labelled, with instructions on the refrigerator about how I was to heat it up and serve it to him. I was in my one of my two-year vegetarian phases, so there wasn't a labelled plate for me, which was perfectly fine. A meal without meat was hardly worth cooking, in her books, so she understandably hadn't bothered.

I set about making some homemade chili and cornbread, quick and easy. As the minutes reached towards supper, I noticed my father passing by the stove more than a few times. He'd read the instructions left about his own supper, but what was that I was cooking? In a rare and precious moment of real dialogue with him, I explained the meal and he made a quick choice. “I'll have some of that instead. Looks like something different.” He pointed to the bubbling pot. It was a temporary burst of light into our relationship. A seventy-year comet.

I served him as he preferred, in front of the television on a fold-out TV table. He ate a first helping and a hearty second. Then, in a moment that hung in the timeless space from which that comet had descended,
he gave me the only compliment I can ever remember getting from him: “This is really good, you know. I wish I could eat like this every night. It's not at all like your mother's cooking. All those heavy sauces. All that fried butter. All that meat. She's killing me, you know. Killing me.” And then a long pause. “Oh well, that's okay. I've got to die somehow.” He seemed so terribly serious.

For the record, he survived another decade of my mother's expert French cooking – and in the end, her meals didn't kill him, as he died of something entirely unrelated to diet. In fact, she probably extended his life for years by dedicating herself to his every need and mood, making it her first priority as a wonderful wife of her era to accommodate a husband who would be eulogized, in the opening line, as «un homme difficile.» Yet there it was, the definite difference about
different
. For one parent, “different” represented a worthy exploration of the unknown – a wide road leading to possibilities that might be delightful. For another, «différent» symbolized the routine confirmation of the known – an uninteresting passage to a closed door that was hardly worth opening. Two views of being, and not being, within the boundaries of sameness – and two disparate consequences, too. The word sounded almost exactly the same in both of my languages, yet meant something so entirely
different
in both of my cultures.